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DOCTOR Jayant Patel
was allowed to work at a US hospital for 12 years
despite his surgery leading to patient deaths, hospital payouts and
several
patients being permanently scarred.

New details on Dr
Patel's reign of terror at a Portland, Oregon, hospital
have emerged – including the fact he was sued four times for
malpractice.

In one case he
mistakenly severed a tube linking the kidney and bladder
of 79-year-old patient Helen Brooks. Three further operations were
needed
to repair the botched surgery but Ms Brooks lost her kidney and died
two
years later.

Dr Patel and his
hospital Kaiser Permanente were sued over the operation
in 1996. Ms Brooks' lawyer Bernard Jolies has told US newspapers the
hospital
"paid us a bunch of money".

In another case,
three years earlier, Dr Patel was sued after an operation
for intestinal ulcers left a 28-year-old man impotent.

The man's urethra
was cut in the botched procedure and a 20cm metal
clamp was accidentally left inside his body.

Weeks later the man
began urinating out of his rectum and after being
re-admitted to hospital, the clamp was discovered and three more
operations
were needed to repair Dr Patel's damage.

The man's lawyer
Austin Crowe told a US newspaper his client "went through
hell, it was horrible".

It has also emerged
that the Portland hospital at the centre of Dr Patel's
malpractice activities, Kaiser Permanente, employed the doctor as a
hospital
surgeon from 1989 to 2001 when he resigned.

Last week The
Courier-Mail revealed Dr Patel had been linked to three
deaths at Kaiser. An internal review of 79 of his cases resulted in the
hospital imposing restrictions on his surgical practices in June 1998.

Kaiser spokesman
Jim Gersbach has refused to comment directly on the
circumstances surrounding Dr Patel's departure only saying in a
statement
"when an unexpected outcome in patient care comes up, it triggers a
quality
review that can lead to additional training and supervision,
restriction
or practice or termination".

Restrictions on Dr
Patel's practice were imposed by Oregon's Board of
Medical Examiners, but not until September 2001, two years and three
months
after Kaiser Permanente's restrictions.

The board's
executive director Kathleen Haley said the board thought
by restricting rather than removing Patel's licence "they had kept the
vulnerable patients from being seen by him. They felt he could still
contribute
in some way".

She said to remove
Dr Patel's licence to practise, the board had to
show "there's no way this physician could practise any medicine
safely".